The cage
by May La Nee
Summary: My first X-Men fic, AU, based on a very good RP. Feel free to drop your opinion. Mystique gets kidnapped. Set in the present. Magneto/Mystique.


The confirmation of the massacre had hardly come in when the door flew from its handles and was tossed into the hall. A group of people entered. The security team followed but were disarmed instantly, some had their blood burst from their body with no apparent cause. Before the president could panic, every metal item rose from its place and held every human at gunpoint. Magneto stood there, quivering with rage, his eyes burning with the fires of hell.

"Mystique," he growled. "Where is she?"

The president could feel his watch and wedding ring cripple his hand.

"Erik!" A blue red-haired girl said with a voice beyond her years. "Leave him. I know where she is."

Magneto turned to her, narrowed his eyes, and put a hand on her shoulder. "Get to Vlad," he commanded, grabbing the president by his mangled wrist.

The mutants then held hands and they all went up in smoke.

The factory hall she was held in had been partially converted to a torture facility with interrogation rooms. Mystique's cell took three quarters of the room it was in. It also had metal bars that moved aside as if they were molten. Magneto threw the president into the blue girl's hands and walked towards the blue red-haired figure in the corner. She was on the floor, her knees pulled up to above her shoulders, her nose nearly between her ankles. When Magneto kneeled in front of her she moved her hands from the back of her head and slowly looked up at him.

"Erik…?" she uttered with broken voice.

"Hello there..." he said softly, taking off a bloody glove to touch her hair.  
"D-did they hurt my babies…?" she sounded like she was about to cry.

"Nein. No, they're all right." He leaned aside for her to see them. "We're all right."  
"They killed Lady Wanda." Still meek and broken. The president almost pitied her.

"We've killed all of them. Have they hurt you?"

"…broke my leg…" she squeaked, tears welling up in her eyes.

The president could feel with his bones that his watch and ring filled up with energy. All the metal in the room did, though nothing moved. It lasted a second, and when it settled Magneto stood up.

"Who did this to you?" he asked too calmly. He wasn't looking at her anymore.

"…don't remember…" she said meekly.

Magneto turned away from her and slowly put his glove back on, as the other mutants crowded around Mystique. He stepped away from them and slowly moved his hand. The president's watch rose as if by magic. In one smooth movement the wedding ring slid off and glided into Magneto's palm. The flesh that had come off with it flopped to the ground.

"This woman here has been kept in a cage her entire childhood," he muttered to his clenched fist. "When I found her she was naked, filthy, starved, dehydrated, disfigured and terrified. Why, you may ask? Why would anyone do that to her?"

No answer. Erik Lehnsherr _had_ been jailed for killing Kennedy, and this president had nothing to prove right now.

"Because SHE'S A _MUTANT_!" Magneto roared. His eyes blazed with the fires of Hell as a sudden jerk of the watch degloved part of the president's hand.

"You're a black Christian. If _anyone_ ought to know the value of respect and equality it's you," he spat, "Yet you re-install segregation and create giant robots to fight us. You _DISGUST_ me!"

The watch moved half an inch further, and Magneto breathed heavily. After a moment of consideration he growled: "I ought to kill you right now."

"Dad…" the blue girl from before said carefully as she put a hand on his arm, "Alle law enforcement agents in the state sind tot. Ich bin sicher he learned seine -..."

"Another president won't make a difference," one of the normal looking mutants said from the mattress Mystique had been sitting next to. The only thing that marked him out were the sharp teeth all of them seemed to possess. "Same Scheiß different pile. I say we verprügeln him and leave him here."

The president knew he had lost many things today. A large number of good men and women, for example, and his wedding ring were among these. But he hadn't considered he might have lost his mind, too, until he heard a voice in his head.

"_I'm sorry my friend, but this is going to hurt. I know where you are and we will help you when they're gone, but we can't afford to fight them_."  
"_Who are you_?" the president thought back carefully, afraid these evil mutants were able to tell what was going on before he could.

"_My name is Charles Xavier. I'm a mutant too. A telepath, which allows me to speak to you in your mind. The people with you now are the Brotherhood and the Acolytes. My people, the X-Men, will help you, but we are not powerful enough to take on the entire extended Lehnsherr family_." Charles must have picked up on his fear, for he added; "_I advise you to put up as little of a fight as possible. As they said; another president is no use_."

When the X-Men arrived they found the president in a corner of the room Mystique had been held in, a bolster of metal poles and items making it impossible for him to move or be reached. When they had finally freed him he was a changed man. Not only because his wedding ring had to be surgically removed from his skull, where it had been wedged in like a third eye. Also not because the flesh of his hand had to be stitched back to that of his wrist, or because he would always have a strangely bony ring finger. No, he was a changed man, for he now realised mutants weren't evil.  
…which was exactly why he was forced to step down from his position when nearly every human citizen in the United States rioted against him.


End file.
